Guns don't kill people, backpacks kill people

[Scooter]

Michigan school district bans backpacks: "We will not take any chances"

A Michigan school district implemented a backpack ban starting Monday over safety concerns.

The policy will be in place through the end of the school year, Flint Community Schools Superintendent Kevelin Jones said in a letter to parents. Students who bring backpacks to school will be sent to the office, where they'll need to call a parent or guardian to come pick up the bag.

"Across the country, we have seen an increase in threatening behavior and contraband, including weapons, being brought into schools at all levels," Jones wrote. "Backpacks make it easier for students to hide weapons, which can be disassembled and harder to identify or hidden in pockets, inside books or under other items."

Students will be allowed to bring small purses with personal items, clear plastic bags with clothes and lunchboxes, Jones said. The bags will be subject to search.

In the past, some school districts across the country have required students to use clear backpacks. Jones said clear backpacks don't completely fix security issues. In a guide for parents, the district wrote weapons can "still easily be hidden in clear backpacks."

"By banning backpacks altogether and adding an increased security presence across the district, we can better control what is being brought into our buildings," he wrote to parents.

The Flint Board of Education, the district's administration and principals approved Flint's new backpack policy, Jones said. They also have support from the Flint Police Department.

"We apologize for any inconvenience that this policy will have on our scholars and families, but when it comes to the safety of our school community, we will not take any chances," Jones said.

[Joe Guy]

If backpacks are outlawed, only outlaws will carry backpacks.

[MajGenl.Meade]

And some in-laws, no doubt.

We would have hidden guns up our shorts. Or so we said.

[Joe Guy]

They look as though they're preparing to undertake a mass shooting.

[Big RR]

And don't let anyone bring his violin case to school.

[Scooter]

How are kids supposed to do their homework? I went to a semestered high school, that meant I still had four and sometimes five classes each semester. I would have to cart textbooks and notebooks for each class to and from school every day. Are they supposed to carry all of that without any sort of bag, rain, snow or shine?

[Bicycle Bill]

How are kids supposed to do their homework? I went to a semestered high school, that meant I still had four and sometimes five classes each semester. I would have to cart textbooks and notebooks for each class to and from school every day. Are they supposed to carry all of that without any sort of bag, rain, snow or shine?

Uhhh... fifty-some years ago we used to do it.  Our books were kept in our lockers and during the five minutes between 55-minute class periods we'd go to the locker, stash our math books and get out our English or history texts, for example, and head off to the next class carrying the book under our arms (or in the case of the girls, held tightly up against their chests).

Maybe what they're going to end up doing is eliminate any possibly means of concealment of contraband, whether it's weapons, electronics, drugs, or what-have-you, by making everybody — teachers, students, custodians, lunch-room workers, administration staff — strip completely naked upon arrival and go about their day totally nude.

-"BB"-

[Scooter]

Going from class to class is one thing; getting to or from home with five or six textbooks plus as many notebooks plus gym gear, plus plus plus, without a receptacle of some kind to carry it all is a moronic response to the problem.

[Econoline]

making everybody — teachers, students, custodians, lunch-room workers, administration staff — strip completely naked upon arrival and go about their day totally nude.

Bonus: that would be a big help in sorting the boys and girls into the "correct" bathrooms.

[ex-khobar Andy]

And another mass shooter in Texas. Lucky the shooter was wearing full tactical gear so was promptly shot by a cop there on another errand - a good guy with a gun - before he had the chance to kill ten people. Being Texas I am sure there were plenty of armed good guys there who thought better of pulling out their weapons lest they get shot either by the perpetrator or the police. As long as the bad guys wear a uniform (Geneva Convention and all that) we are safe. Should probably get that into law - if you plan to shoot up a school or a mall you must wear a uniform. AFAIK he was not wearing a backpack.

[MajGenl.Meade]

At least they're running out of guns . . .

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65521233

Brownsville: Seven dead as car strikes people in Texas border town

Seven people have been killed in the US state of Texas after a car struck a group at a bus stop close to a shelter for the homeless and migrants. The incident happened in the city of Brownsville near the Mexican border at about 08:30 local time (14:30 GMT). At least six other people were been injured, some of them critically.

The driver has been arrested and charged. Brownsville police say it is not clear whether the incident was intentional.

Most of the victims were Venezuelan men.

. . . and perhaps running out of Hispanic immigrants????

[BoSoxGal]

It seems like everyone always points to Columbine as the watershed moment for modern US gun violence -

But the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that it really started with Ruby Ridge and Waco. Extreme disregard for human life exhibited by trigger happy agents of the government in the name of its citizens.

Am I wrong?

[Bicycle Bill]

It seems like everyone always points to Columbine as the watershed moment for modern US gun violence -

But the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that it really started with Ruby Ridge and Waco. Extreme disregard for human life exhibited by trigger happy agents of the government in the name of its citizens.

Am I wrong?

I'll go back even further...

13/14 July 1966 — 24-year-old Richard Speck enters a townhouse in Chicago which was serving as a dormitory for student nurses.   He secured and confined the nine residents in a bedroom; then, over the course of the night, led eight of the nine, one by one, into another bedroom where he murdered them by stabbing or strangulation (or a combination of both).   He also raped at least one of the victims.   The sole survivor was able to avoid sharing their fate by hiding beneath a bed in the confinement room and was overlooked by the murderer.

1 August 1966 — 25-year-old Marine veteran James Whitman opens fire from his sniper's perch in the tower of the Main Hall on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin, timing his attack during a class-change period to maximize the number of potential targets.   Over the span of approximately an hour and a half, he kills 15 people (including an unborn child) and wounds an additional 31 before being killed himself by officers of the Austin PD.   It was later found that he had also stabbed his wife and mother to death before entering the campus building and beginning his rampage.

16 October 1991 — 35-year-old George Hennard, an unemployed former merchant seaman, drove his pickup truck through the front window of a Luby's Restaurant in Killeen, TX.   He shot and killed 23 people and wounded 27 others.   Following a brief shootout with police in which he was wounded, he refused police orders to surrender and turned his weapon on himself.

I could go on and on (more is the pity), but these three examples will suffice.

So you see, nut-jobs killing people in large numbers over a short period of time (usually but not always guns) have been as much a part of America as fireworks on the Fourth of July.   Waco and Ruby Ridge were merely responses to a bad situation that got worse.

-"BB"-

[Sue U]

Public mass shootings certainly go back much further than the Texas Tower incident; here's one from my hometown in 1949, often said to be the first "modern" example:

Howard Unruh

ETA:
Oh, I just checked Wiki's "List of Rampage Killers" and Uruh wasn't anywhere near the "first 'modern' example,'" that's just our local folklore, apparently.

[BoSoxGal]

Yes gun violence has a long history in this country no doubt, but the escalation since the 90s has been something altogether different.

There is no longer any doubt that the resurgent white nationalist movement has its roots in a response to Ruby Ridge and Waco. It just seems also relevant that those two events, televised nearly nonstop on the cable news, might have done much to normalize gun violence in the minds of many. Those two events certainly kicked off an increase in gun sales which has escalated year after year for the last 30.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023 ... rey-toobin

[MajGenl.Meade]

What BSG wrote - that.

What we conservatives would point to as the deterioration of social cohesion rooted in normalization of immoral minorities was aided and abetted by the perceived dishonesty and downright undemocratic injustice of the military/police/political axis. It was the latter that fueled (and fuels) the twisted rhetoric and activities of such as the Proud Boys, conspiracy buffoons of all stripes, and the cult of individual irresponsibility that equates "my feelings" with a right to break the laws of society and the bounds of common decency and respect (i.e. Trumpism to the nth degree).